Sharif Digital Repository

In this paper, an attempt to identify and characterize minor road traffic behavior at unsignalized urban intersections in a city situated in a developing country is described. Information about the particular traffic behavior was collected using video cameras placed at 12 unsignalized intersections connecting minor to major roadways in Tehran. Stop signs and/or blinking red signals provided the stopping message at the minor approaches of the selected intersections. Relevant information about the behavior of more than 2400 vehicles was extracted from the video displays and the database records consisted of 31 variables reflecting driver, pedestrian, passenger, vehicle and intersection... 

Organizations are increasingly accepting data quality (DQ) as a major key to their success. In order to assess and improve DQ, methods have been devised. Many of these methods attempt to raise DQ by directly manipulating low quality data. Such methods operate reactively and are suitable for organizations with highly developed integrated systems. However, there is a lack of a proactive DQ method for businesses with weak IT infrastructure where data quality is largely affected by tasks that are performed by human agents. This study aims to develop and evaluate a new method for structured data, which is simple and practical so that it can easily be applied to real world situations. The new... 

Data quality (DQ) has been defined as ‘fitness for use’. In order to measure and improve DQ, various methodologies have been defined. A DQ methodology is a set of guidelines and techniques that define a rational process to measure and improve the quality of data. In order to make DQ measurement and improvement more organised, DQ dimensions have been defined. A dimension is a single aspect of DQ, such as accuracy, completeness, timeliness, and relevancy. In order to measure dimensions, special tools have been developed. These are called metrics. In most organisations, some data are more significant than others. In other words, some data carry more ‘weight’. Hence, they must play a more... 

Data quality (DQ) has been defined as ‘fitness for use’. In order to measure and improve DQ, various methodologies have been defined. A DQ methodology is a set of guidelines and techniques that define a rational process to measure and improve the quality of data. In order to make DQ measurement and improvement more organised, DQ dimensions have been defined. A dimension is a single aspect of DQ, such as accuracy, completeness, timeliness, and relevancy. In order to measure dimensions, special tools have been developed. These are called metrics. In most organisations, some data are more significant than others. In other words, some data carry more ‘weight’. Hence, they must play a more... 

Controlling the safe distances between vehicles on freeways can be used to prevent many accidents. In this research, image-processing techniques have been used to develop an online system that calculates the longitudinal distances between vehicles. This system facilitates controlling safe distances between vehicles without the need for high technology devices. Our approach is real-time and simple, but efficient operations have been used to reduce the image occlusion problem. The main concept of this system is using simple, quick, and effective algorithms for calculating the position of each vehicle in each image. In this way, traffic parameters like speed and distances between vehicles can... 

The purpose of this paper is to develop a global optimization model, simplification schemes, and a heuristic procedure for the design of a shortcut-enhanced unidirectional loop aisle-network with pick-up and drop-off stations. The objective is to minimize the total loaded and empty trip distances. This objective is the main determinant for the fleet size of the vehicles, which in turn is the driver of the total life-cycle cost of vehicle-based unit-load transport systems. The shortcut considerably reduces the length of the trips while maintaining the simplicity of the system. The global model solves simultaneously for the loop design, stations' locations and shortcut design. We then develop... 

The positive coupling effect decreases the condensate saturation as a result of very high flow rates in vicinity of the wellbore. The current work challenges the notion that the positive rate effect does not lead in falling trend of condensate saturation around the wellbore in the case of rich gas composition. According to the results obtained from this parameter case study, four distinct trends would appear in the condensate saturation profile of both lean and rich gas compositions. These quadruplet trends are consistent and their occurrence is mainly related to the considered base capillary number (Ncb) which is likely dependent to the composition of the fluid  

We develop heuristic procedures for concurrent design of block layout, material flow network, and input and output stations. Unlike the common practice in the flexible bay structure layout design, our objective function includes both loaded and empty flow between pairs of I/O stations. This measure of effectiveness is the main determinant of the fleet size of the vehicles, which in turn is the major driver of the total investment and operational costs in vehicle-based material handling. Our work is the first to design flexible bay structure layouts for loop-based material flow patterns. We first develop heuristic algorithms to configure the layout on the foundations of a unidirectional loop... 

In the present study, Lactobacillus plantarum PTCC 1058 was microencapsulated in Alginate-chitosan blended beads based on ionically dual cross-linking by Na-tripolyphosphate (Na-TPP). The homogenous solution of bacteria and alginate was dripped into the gelling bath of calcium chloride. After 30 min hardening, filtrate beads were transferred into the solution of chitosan. Dual cross-linked gel beads were prepared by employing Na-TPP solution to the chitosan coated beads. Morphology, particle size, alginate-chitosan interaction, characterizing the structure of single and dual cross-linked beads were determined by using scanning electron microscopy SEM, FTIR and XRD analysis. FTIR analysis... 

Lactobacillus Plantarum PTCC 1058 bacteria and DHA-rich oil were microencapsulated together or individually in an optimized alginate-pectin-gelatin biocomposite hydrogel. The survivability of L. plantarum and oxidative stability of DHA were evaluated using simulated gastrointestinal (SGI) conditions and 4 wk storage in commercial orange juice at 4 and 25 °C. The results showed that the multilayer biocomposite had significant influence on the stability of the microcapsules in terms of survivability of probiotic bacteria and oxidative stability of DHA with SGI conditions and storage at 4 and 25 °C compared to the free cells. Incorporation of probiotic bacteria and DHA showed the synergistic... 

This paper is an endeavour to give an alternative definition for sustainable development (SD). It reviews the previous works in this area, and finds common grounds of these works, namely dynamism and quantification of the system. The paper then discusses dynamic stability and relates it to the concept of sustainability. It constructs an analogy between sustainability objectives and dynamic stability. The discussion continues to introduce chaos as one inherent characteristic of socio-economic systems because of their nonlinear behaviour. A new definition of SD is then proposed. It is applied to the dynamic models that describe the inter-relationships of environmental, economic and social... 

This paper describes an attempt to shed some light on road safety in Asia Pacific region by characterizing and assessing its road accidents. The relevant national road accident data were extracted from centralized data sources of international agencies. Due to data incompleteness and missing values, 21 Asia Pacific countries, presenting more than half of the world's population, were selected for detailed analysis. The study database consisted of 7 variables, covering years 1980 and 1995. The univariate and multivariate statistical analyses for the selected countries showed interesting results and relations for the selected variables. Accident rates, reflecting road accident risk and... 

Roadway traffic noise pollution for the Greater Tehran Metropolitan Area (GTMA) was analyzed. The study database consisted of relevant information about the noise level, traffic, roadway and meteorological characteristics. The collected noise level information at the roadway sound level meter receptor site included equivalent noise level. The equivalent noise level at reception points along the GTMA roadways was found often in breach of noise standards  

Development of a highway congestion index on the basis of expert and user opinions with fuzzy set theory was attempted. Forty 1-min videotape segments showing different highway traffic flow conditions were displayed to a group of highway experts and users. They were asked to complete the relevant questionnaires on the existence and acceptability of congestion for each video segment display. Five congestion-descriptive variables of travel speed, travel rate, delay rate, travel rate ratio, and delay ratio were determined for each video segment. Information about the values of congestion-descriptive variables for the displayed videos, questionnaire responses, and fuzzy set theory were used to... 

The municipalities of large Iranian cities require regular air pollutant emission monitoring for motor vehicles. The recorded data include information about commonly regulated air pollutants and motor vehicle characteristics which were randomly selected and studied from the Tehran database. Regression analysis was found ineffective in modeling the relationships among air pollutant, meteorological and motor vehicle characteristics. However, the artificial neural network, ANN, modeling seem to be a useful tool for prediction of air pollutants. The developed ANN models were found to be superior to the developed regression models. Application of the study approach and results could improve motor... 

We numerically investigate the vacuum electron acceleration by a high-intensity linearly polarized twisted laser pulse. It is shown that the inherent spiral structure of a Laguerre-Gaussian laser pulse leads to improvement in trapping and acceleration of an electron to energies of the order of GeV in the off-axis case. Also, it is demonstrated that by employing a proper choice of initial injection parameters, the high-energetic electrons with very small scattering angles can be produced  

In this work, solvent blending in combination with extruding are applied to provide polystyrene/silica nanocomposite specimens. Transmission electron microscope (TEM) and scanning electron microscope (SEM) show same nanoparticle dispersion in PS matrix in low to high filler loadings. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), dynamic mechanical thermal analyzer (DMTA) and thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA) were used to study the thermophysical characteristic of the nanocomposites in solid state. In addition, the melt state rheological behavior of the samples was investigated under constant and zero shear rates. Interestingly, different behaviors were detected in nanocomposites in low and high... 

Dissolution pressure and nozzle temperature effects on particle size and distribution were investigated for RESS (Rapid Expansion of Supercritical Solution) process. Supercritical CO2 was used as solvent and Ibuprofen was applied as the model component in all runs. The resulting Ibuprofen nano-particles (about 50 nm in optimized runs) were analyzed by SEM and laser diffraction particle size analyzer systems. Results show that in low supercritical pressure ranges, depending on the solvent and solid component properties (Lower than 105 bar for Ibuprofen-CO2 system), nozzle temperature should be as low as possible (80-90 °C for Ibuprofen-CO2 system). In the other hand in high supercritical... 

In this paper, we exploit a fuzzy controller on a flexible bevel-tip needle to manipulate the needle's base in order to steer its tip in a preset obstacle-free and target-tracking path. Although the needle tends to follow a curvature path, spinning the needle with an extremely high rotational velocity makes it symmetric with respect to the tissue to follow a straight path. The fuzzy controller determines an appropriate spinning to generate the planned trajectory and, the closed-loop system tries to match the needle body with that trajectory. The swine's brain tissue model, extracted from an in-vitro experimental setup, is a non-homogenous, uncertain and fast-updatable network to model real... 

The aim of this study was to investigate the co-microencapsulation of Lactobacillus plantarum and DHA-rich oil in a novel gastrointestinal-resistant biocomposite composed of alginate, pectin and gelatin. The optimal biocomposite consisted of 1.06% alginate, 0.55% pectin and 0.39% gelatin showed 88.66% survivability of the microencapsulated cells compared to the free cells (50.36%). In addition, co-microencapsule containing probiotic and DHA fatty acid was synthesized and physicochemically analyzed using SEM, FTIR, TGA, XRD. The results from SEM clearly confirmed that cells were completely entrapped in the matrix and DHA increased smoothness and compactness of the surface of the particles....